Rioter Comments

[Planned 4.5 or 4.6] Summoner Spell and Enchantment Changes

Just a quick heads up on changes that we're planning for 4.5. We're working on some itemization recipe, enchantment retuning and Summoner Spell updates for 4.5. The recipe changes I'll post on a different thread at a later date since it's much lengthier than my usual PBE posts.
**Boot Enchantments**
Overall, enchantments were an interesting experiment. Despite the power or popularity of Homeguard, it didn't seem like the enchantment system was causing any particular problems in Season 3 for the most part. However, in Season 4, it's looking like the late late game often gets dragged out too long and is much more difficult to close than intended.
I don't think that simply changing Enchantment: Homeguard will solve the problem of the errant late games but it's definitely a contributor to the overall state. We're going to reduce the power level of Homeguard to clean up a little bit of the end-game problem and power up some of the other options such that there's a better balance between offensive mobility and defensive mobility options.
{{item:3255}} **Enchantment: Homeguard**
* No longer fully regenerates you upon activation.
* Instead, item restores 35% of your missing Health and Mana per second while at fountain.
We like that Homeguard can give you an instant satisfying burst when used well - enabling you to defend objectives almost immediately upon a successful recall. However, the speed of response is just too fast right now. By changing the mechanic to restore a percentage of your missing Health and Mana - we basically add a couple of extra crucial seconds if you want to re-engage or defend at full health.
However, if you were severely wounded and you rush off the fountain with Homeguard, you'll only be at roughly 70% or so. Healthy enough to mount a defense of a tower but not quite so domineering.
{{item:3284}} **Enchantment: Alacrity**
**Movement Speed**: 15 --> 20
Alacrity has always been in a bit of a poor spot due to being off from a tuning perspective.
*(As a bit of a followup, Boots of Mobility has seen roughly equal play / success numbers as before. There's been a bit of a dropoff in usage rates but nothing major overall. However, this change will make those players who were trying to compensate for the change by using the Alacrity Enchantment actually have equivalent Movement Speed in combat with the other boot options.*
*Or you could just enchant Boots of Swiftness with it. SPEEEEED.*)
{{item:3252}} **Enchantment: Furor**
**Price**: 650 --> 475
Furor is too expensive for what it brings to the table. While Furor is an excellent option for training or kiting your opponents, the price often made the practice moot because if you spent 650 gold training or kiting someone and you didn't have the combat strength to make it pay off - it was kind of pointless.
This change will make Furor slightly easier to pick up when the mid-game or late-game fights start and players start to realize they need an extra bit of Movement Speed in fights - but can't afford to begin starting down a path to another major Movement Speed item like Zephyr or Phantom Dancer.
{{item:3276}} **Enchantment: Captain**
**Directional Movement Speed Strength**: 8% --> 10%
**Price**: 750 --> 600
We've always been unhappy with aura effects as their relative power level versus visceral/intellectual satisfaction is always off. However, you could make a number of decent arguments that by overpricing and dampening the power level of the Captain Enchant, we never gave the aura a fair shot at being appreciated or recognized by our players.
So, tentatively, we're increasing the power level and decreasing the gold cost of the Captain Enchantment. We'll keep an eye on whether people start appreciating the power of the effect or whether or not at this point it simply becomes overpowered and mandatory before deciding if it really needs further work.
{{item:3258}} **Enchantment: Distortion**
* **Ghost / Flash / Teleport CD Reduction**: 25% --> 20%
* **(NEW)** Adds additional effects to the spells:
* **Ghost**
* **Movement Speed:** 28% --> 35%
* **Duration:** 10 --> 12
* **Flash**
* **Cast Range:** 400 --> 480
* **Teleport**
* Grants **30% bonus movement speed for 3 seconds** upon a **successful** Teleport
The Distortion Enchantment right now is most often used to enhance powerful initiation effects, especially combined with Flash. These changes are designed to augment all three of the spells in question to be a powerful offensive tool regardless of which Summoner Spell you are using to accomplish it.
It's kind of crazy and potentially overpowered - but it's also exciting and it seems like there are enough levers on the item to tune it to a spot where it isn't if any one of the effects seem out of line.
**Summary**: We're basically either increasing the power or decreasing the gold barrier to a lot of the enchantments that can be used to make interesting Team Fight plays for the mid to late game - with the exception of Homeguard which we're nerfing slightly to clean up the late game team fight defenses.
** Summoner Spells **
It's always been a little weird that our pure defensive supports don't have a Summoner Spell that emphasizes their support / healing nature and they have to take things that are either highly aggressive Ignite or somewhat less aggressive Exhaust to get a similar level of effect.
We're making a couple of changes to Heal and Ignite to help give them a bit more character, while also slightly retuning Exhaust to fit better on a larger variety of roles.
{{summoner:7}} **Heal**
* **Targets Affected**: 5 --> 2
* Now only affects **you and the target** nearest your cursor (within 700 range).
* If it can't find anything near your cursor, it'll affect the most wounded nearby allied champion instead.
* **Cooldown**: 300 --> 240
* **Heal Amount**: 90-345 --> 90-495 *(Scales non-linearly with level, more at higher levels)*
* **Additional Effect**: After healing the target, it **then** removes any **healing reduction** effects the target suffers.
* **Additional Effect**: Targets healed also gain **30% Movement Speed** for 2 seconds.
We've always had trouble with Heal as its narrow functionality and high area of effect characteristics has made it pretty much impossible to balance for the lane and the late game. We also wanted to retune Heal to be attractive to both characters with Heal and characters without innate Sustain.
Heal will have natural synergies with strong Healers like Soraka / Janna as it gives them a way to ensure that their heal sticks - at least for a short time on a very very long cooldown. The Movement Speed now allows it to either enable you to heal lethal damage and facilitate an escape - or target it at an initiator under fire and allow him to rush through to the opponents.
{{summoner:14}} **Ignite**
* **Additional Effect**: Now also grants vision of the target over the duration (Non-Stealth only.)
Ignite, traditionally, has either overwhelmed Heal or been dominated by it. We've decided to make Heal simply negate 1:1 the effects of Ignite on a single target - and thus Ignite needs a little more sideways functionality.
We've always wanted to make Ignite grant vision of the target so you can slowly watch them burn but this also better clarifies Ignite's use as either a signal to focus fire your target or a end-spell to help finish off your targets as they run by ensuring they can't evade you by dodging into a brush.
{{summoner:3}} ** Exhaust **
* **Movement Speed Reduction**: 30% --> 25%
* **Damage Reduction**: -30% --> -50%
* **Cast Range**: 550 --> 650
Tentative numbers on Exhaust right now.
Exhaust has traditionally been powerful on initiators, mostly because the short cast range demands that you close the distance with some other spell before using Exhaust. Exhaust is center-to-center cast, so the 550 cast range actually falls short of most AD Carry attack ranges or other burst initiation ranges.
This makes using Exhaust defensively against carries somewhat awkward, as you typically have to walk forward to Exhaust the target that is actually inflicting all the preventable damage incoming.
We've reduced the slowing power of spell because you can cast it from a longer distance and we've made the spell much more powerful as a preventative reactive measure against the engagement burst so that casting Exhaust **before** the impact happens is more rewarding.
**Note:** Probably won't be responding to this thread tonight in full vigilance - I'll hop on this thread more when I get confirmation that these changes are on PBE. Otherwise, again - this is just a quick heads up on what you'll seen soon on PBE.